Data Storage

As headlines about corporate hacks and data leaks have continued to dominate technology news sites, companies have moved to offer more security features to worried users and enterprise clients. Today, Dropbox announced that it is introducing support for open standard FIDO Universal Second Factor verification (U2F) to provide better account security to its users.

The cloud storage service has already been offering two-step verification for years, requiring users to provide both their usual usernames and passwords, plus additional security codes sent to their phones. The use of a second factor helps protect users from a variety of methods hackers can use to access passwords...

Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform, a growing collection of integrated services - analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web. In the 12 months since Build 2014, Microsoft has delivered over 500 new Azure services and features, and greatly expanded the footprint and capabilities of what Azure delivers. Here's a snapshot of Azure Allure, articulated by Microsoft exec Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise, at the Microsoft Build 2015 conference in San Francisco:

19 unique Azure regions up and running worldwide, with over 90,000 new Azure customer subscriptions per month

1.4 million SQL databases being used by applications hosted inside Asure

Today, running a business or a personal online presence often allows you to utilize cloud services to store your data and other information. Using the cloud to store your data has both advantages and disadvantages depending on what you are using the cloud for as well as your accessibility to the cloud itself at all times. Understanding the benefits and drawbacks to using the cloud to store your data is a way for you to make a decision you are truly satisfied with for your own business or personal reasons.

Advantages of Storing Data on the Cloud

Storing data on the cloud allows you to access your data and information from just about anywhere, increasing accessibility compared to traditional servers and storage options. Accessing your data on "The Cloud" is possible via mobile phone, tablet, or a laptop computer with Internet access...

Amazon delighted investors on Thursday by posting a rare profit, helped in large part by its profitable cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services. AWS sales surged 81% over the year-ago quarter, brought in revenue of $US1.82 billion for the quarter and dropped $US391 million of profit to the bottom line, an operating margin of 21.4%, CFO Brian Olsavsky told analysts on the quarterly conference call.

So analysts couldn’t resist the question: with AWS contributing so much to Amazon’s new-found profits, will the company keep cutting prices in what the tech industry calls the “race to zero”? Short answer: Yes...

A new data backup and recovery service by Google is out of beta and ready for prime time. Google Cloud Storage Nearline, which the company first announced in March, is available to enterprises looking for online storage for data that does not need to be frequently accessed.

The company also said it would offer new customers a “Switch and Save” program, providing 100 petabytes of storage free for six months to companies that migrate their documents over from existing cloud storage services such as Amazon Web Services' Glacier storage system...

Dropbox has announced new features in administration, security and integration in a bid to change the way the cloud storage provider works for business. The company is introducing tighter account security through two-step verification, tiered administrative controls, as well as an extension to the Dropbox for Business API, with new capabilities for shared folders.

CloudLock, Netskope and SkySync are among the data migration providers who are already beginning to build integrations, alongside Israeli firm Adallom, which recently announced it was looking after the security for Dropbox for Business. “This is a major milestone for Dropbox for Business,” said UK country manager Mark van der Linden...

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a global leader in flash storage solutions, at Computex Taipei 2015 today announced its new CloudSpeed Eco™ Gen. II SATA SSD, a purpose-built storage device for cloud service providers with up to 2TB* capacity. This new SSD is now sampling with select hyperscale customers. Based on 15nm NAND flash, the new CloudSpeed Eco Gen. II SSD delivers greater storage density with 3x the streaming bandwidth vs. hard disk drives (HDDs).

Designed as a drop-in replacement for HDDs, CloudSpeed Eco Gen. II provides datacenters with a lower cost-per-square-foot for hyperscale applications such as analytics, media streaming and content repositories. Cloud Data Services, such as Big Data Analytics, SaaS, IaaS and PaaS environments, are driving radical data center transformation. The number of connected ‘things’ is set to explode, with Gartner forecasting this number will reach 25 billion by 2020, generating a deluge of data that will need to be analyzed in real-time1. Micropayments, online commerce and similar applications are read-intensive and require high data throughput and scalable storage capacity...

Cloud storage provider Box has announced that it is working with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to deliver secure file sharing and collaboration to its employees. The move represents a major customer win for the firm, who now has more than 40 federal customers on its books.

“Innovative government agencies, like DOJ, are deeply committed to leveraging emerging cloud technologies to better serve the American people, while ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive information,” said Aaron Levie, Box CEO. “We are thrilled to support the DOJ’s technology efforts, helping to transform the way they manage and share information,” he added...

Cloud storage is one of best innovations in the tech space. It brings the convenience to everything. Instead of copying crucial documents to flash drives or burning them to disc, you stick them in the cloud where they can easily be accessed any time. Cloud-based storage knows when you’ve updated a file and updates its copy accordingly.

Cloud computing is getting stronger by day and this is being facilitated by price wars and continuous upgrading of various cloud storage services. Below is a comparison of Mega, Dropbox, Google drive and One drive...

Super Micro Computer Inc. released a new extreme-density sever platform, MicroBlade. These new solutions are aimed at hyper-scale data center, cloud, web hosting environments and video streaming, VDI, high performance video/graphics applications. SuperMicro’s MicroBlade also enables VLP DDR4 16/32GB RDIMM, at the cost of regular DIMM, to increase energy efficiency and cooling. SuperMicro claims that the MicroBlade is a converged computing platform that combines the density, ease of use, manageability, high availability, serviceability, efficiency of blade servers with the cost advantage of rack-mount servers.